Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Some of you may know that the English newspaper, The Guardian, is expanding its coverage of the U.S. It’s website has a global reach and now has a significant portion of its readers here in this country. As part of this expansion, Comment is Free, the Guardian’s daily blog about politics and international affairs will be adding a U.S. section come June.

The Washington DC editor asked me if I would contribute a weekly column to CiF. This is really a dream come true for me. When you first start blogging as I did in 2003, you sometimes feel like you’re shouting down a dark hole and all you hear in reply is your own echo. It’s gratifying when the mainstream media validates the value of your work.

In addition, there is still a significant percentage of people who look down their noses at political blogs as a reliable research source of information or opinion. Usually those people are the ones who disagree with your views to begin with and their dismissiveness tends to confirm their opinions in a loop of circular reasoning. I appreciate the Guardian granting its imprimatur to my work. It goes some ways toward combating this prejudice.

A perfect example of this is Wikipedia, the world’s largest source of online research. It has a deeply confusing attitude toward blogs as sources for Wikipedia articles. Generally, they are frowned upon as unreliable since they are self-published sources, a definite no-no in the Wikipedia world. However, if you are a genuine expert in the field you write about, then blogs can be accepted as sources:

Self-published material may…be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications

But it seems up to the blogger and Wikipedia members to sort out whether you are an expert or not. If you consider yourself an expert, and even if your blog presents original research on a topic, if another member disagrees they can remove your links at will and quote you irrelevant chapter and verse to “justify” their actions.

In my case, there are several members who have campaigned to remove references to my blog (read my Talk page) in Wikipedia articles arguing that by linking to my blog I’ve created a conflict of interest. Given that the conflict of interest rules were created mainly to prevent commercial entities from either promoting themselves or tearing down their rivals, they aren’t relevant to my situation. They also argue that despite my background in the field about which I write, since I am not a professional journalist, author, or academic, my contributions are not trustworthy and not disinterested. Considering that Wikipedia exists online and exploits all the opportunities that the web offers to disseminate knowledge, I find it ironic that it’s standards are so conventional. Either you write a book, newspaper or magazine article, or academic journal article if you wish to be an acceptable source. Write a blog and you’re chopped liver.

A senior Wikipedia editor I respect recently wrote to me about a phenomenon called “wikilawyering,” a tendency, as the online encyclopedia grows ever larger and more complicated, to parse the rules to an incredibly fine degree. In Talmudic interpretation it’s known as pilpul or in English ‘casuistry.’ He examined the work of my opponents and told me that it was such an example. I’m hoping to be working with him and other sympathetic Wikipedia members to figure out how serious political blogs can be treated with more respect within the Wikipedia universe.

And should anyone reading this edit Wikipedia articles, I’d welcome my work being referenced and linked there.

Though the pay at CiF isn’t much, at least I am getting paid. I remember a hilarious story Calvin Trillin wrote I believe in the New Yorker about a nice lunch The Nation’s editor treated him to over a discussion of his becoming a contributing writer. Trillin relates jocularly that the fee for his pieces was to be “in the low three figures.” But three figures is better than no figures.

My English friend, Michael Furmanovsky wrote to me saying: “You should be proud to be contributing to the best newspaper in the world.” As a dyed in the wool NY Times reader I find it difficult to transfer that title to The Guardian. But the truth is that the Times has nowhere near the diversity of political opinion in its pages that The Guardian does. This is proven by the fact that it is The Guardian and not the Times which has developed Comment is Free, a terrific means of integrating the best of the blog world into mainstream media.

The Guardian truly lets a thousand flowers bloom. The Times seems to specialize in a limited and carefully selected number of hot-house flowers. It’s a different journalistic philosophy and while I value both–as a writer I’m especially grateful for The Guardian’s approach.

I want to continue encouraging readers to provide story ideas to me along with links and any other background information that is necessary to write it.

tags blogs as research sources, calvin trillin, comment-is-free, the-guardian, wikipedia

The Guardian’s Comment is Free blog just published my article, Don’t Mention the A Word, about Danny Rubinstein’s “apartheid” comment at a UN conference this week. It is a substantially expanded version of the post I published here a few days ago. It’s nice for a change for the rightists to be lambasting Rubinstein and not me (though I naturally come in for my share) in the comment thread. Actually, it’s a pretty decent debate especially compared to the usual vitriol in the Haaretz and Ynet talkback threads.

tags comment-is-free, danny-rubinstein, do-not-mention-the-a-word, the-guardian, tikun-olam

I’ve got another piece that just came out in Comment is Free at The Guardian. It has the rather unfortunate title: A Texan standoff in the Middle East. I detest how Europeans focus on Bush’s being from Texas as if he’s a hick cowboy. Also, my article doesn’t at all describe a “standoff,” but rather a dangerous escalation of the Mideast arms race that could lead to regional conflict or even nuclear conflagration. My original title was: “Bush Mideast Arms Deal, Bad for Israel.” I wanted to focus my audience on the fact that I was writing from the vantage point of analyzing whether the deal was good for Israel or bad (i.e. “is it good for the Jews or bad for the Jews”).

But when all is said and done as someone once said so memorably: “I’m just glad to be here.” Glad to get published no matter what title they use.

By the by, I’ve just learned yet another derogatory terms for an Arab in the comment thread: “towel.” Yes, I kid you not. You’ve got to see it to believe it.

tags comment-is-free, richard-silverstein, texan-standoff-in-middle-east, the-guardian

Richard Perle ran a fool’s errand by attempting to defend U.S. foreign policy before an audience of Guardian readers in England yesterday night. Since he admits he failed miserably, he thought the second time might be the charm, so he wrote a Comment is Free blog post: We Had the Very Best Intentions. To which I reply: “The Road to Hell is Paved With…”

Does this joker really think having pure intentions should win him any points in this foreign policy debate? What about proper planning and execution? What about understanding what one’s limits should be?

tags comment-is-free, richard-perle, the-guardian, u.s.-iraq-policy, we-had-the-very-best-of-intentions

Sol Salbe just sent me a new Guardian article announcing the creation of the group, Independent Jewish Voices. Nearly 200 British Jews have had their fill of a leadership that seems to support Israeli policy and the Occupation unswervingly. That’s why they’re declaring their independence:

Independent Jewish Voices will…call for a freer debate about the Middle East within the Jewish community. Among the more than 130 signatories are Stephen Fry, Harold Pinter, Mike Leigh, Janet Suzman, Gillian Slovo and Nicole Farhi, as well as leading academics such as Eric Hobsbawm and Susie Orbach.

“We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole,” the letter says. Jewish leaders in Britain, it argues “put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of an occupied people” in conflict with Jewish principles of justice and compassion.

It lists the founding principles which inform the group’s mission:

1. Human rights are universal and indivisible and should be upheld without exception. This is as applicable in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as it is elsewhere.

2. Palestinians and Israelis alike have the right to peaceful and secure lives.

3. Peace and stability require the willingness of all parties to the conflict to comply with international law.

4. There is no justification for any form of racism, including anti-semitism, anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia, in any circumstance.

5. The battle against anti-semitism is vital and is undermined whenever opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded as anti-semitic.

Here is a full list of signatories.

Brian Klug, an Oxford philosophy professor, penned a masterful accompanying column which expands upon the rationale for the initiative:

…Today an oppressive and unhealthy atmosphere is leading many Jews to feel uncertain about speaking out on Israel and Zionism. People are anxious about contravening an unwritten law on what you can and cannot discuss, may or may not assert. It is a climate that raises fundamental questions: about freedom of expression, Jewish identity, representation, and the part that concerned Jews in Britain can play in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to find their way to a better future…

The Board of Deputies of British Jews (which calls itself “the voice of British Jewry”) devotes much of the time and resources of its international division to “the defence of Israel”…All of which suggests that British Jewry, speaking with one voice, stands solidly behind the Israeli government and its military operations.Two things are wrong with this suggestion. First, it’s false. Jews were deeply divided over Israel’s campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon last year. Certainly, there were those who shared the sentiment of the chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, who…said: “Israel, you make us proud.” Others felt roughly the opposite emotion.

…We reject any attempt to suppress legitimate public debate and we abhor the culture of vilification.The slur of “traitor” or “self-hating Jew” is especially noxious. For, if we feel compelled to protest against injustice to Palestinians, this is partly because of the lessons of our own history: the Jewish experience of marginalisation and persecution. Furthermore, when the language of human rights is spoken, many of us (secular and religious) hear the voices of those Hebrew prophets, rabbis, writers, activists and other Jewish figures down the centuries for whom Judaism means nothing if it does not mean social justice.

So, when we speak out against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, or the bombing of Lebanon, or discrimination against Palestinians within Israel itself, we are not turning against our Jewish identity; we are turning to it. Some of us, recalling that nearly 40 years have passed since Israel’s occupation began, hear a resonance. This was the length of time the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, near the end of which Moses gave them a directive: “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). It is a compass bearing for all humanity, especially when we are trying to find our way - or help others to find theirs - to a better future.

It is refreshing to know that in many Diaspora Jewish communities including here in the U.S. and Britain cracks are appearing in massive, age-old glaciers, which are slowing beginning to fall into the sea. It is our role to ensure that our communities become more open, more flexible and more pragmatic around our relationship to Israel. Our leaders, as the Independent Jewish Voices initiative asserts, have not done Israel or their respective communities a service in marching in lock step with the worst of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and Israel’s other Arab neighbors. We look forward to a future of more broad-minded leadership here at home and one that provides hope for Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace.

tags british-jewry, comment-is-free, independent-jewish-voices, israel-arab-conflict, israel-diaspora-relations, the-guardian

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